My Little Guy

Deacon has developed by leaps and bounds this week!

*He gives his mama kisses! (Oh my, I need to start praying now that I'll be able to let him go when he gets married, and that I won't be "Monster-In-Law"-esque to his bride.)

*He is talking more than ever. Not all the words are clear, but he definitely knows what he's saying. Here's his list:

Mama
Daddy
Bo
Lalla (Bella)
Dee-ca (Deacon)
Ca-ca (Cracker)
Chee (Cheese)
Bye!
A-tay (Ate - tagalog for "older sister")
Ball
Nah (Nuk)
Nana (Banana)
GRAMMA!!


He is also revealing his all-boy personality. I love it! So different from the girls.

*If there is any kind of ball in the room, he heads right for it. He spent all afternoon putting Josh's basketball in one of my flower pots and taking it back out.

*This evening he discovered the big blocks, and I discovered what it's like to cook supper uninterrupted!

*He loves to throw EVERYTHING...food from his highchair, toys out of the tub, anything into the toilet.

When I put the camera up to take a picture of him with his blocks, he looked at me and said, "Chee!" I had no idea that he knew what to say during a photo shoot!



Speaking of photo shoots....

Oh Bella! I wish these pics were clearer because they crack me up. But it was taken through two panes of glass, so there's a lot of glare.

Almost caught up!

Thank goodness Monday is over! My to-do list today was out the door. In fact, I completely forgot to go to Mackenzie's class! I volunteer there every Monday, and all day I had this nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. I kept trying to convince myself that it was just because I had so much to do today. Nope, I really was forgetting something important.

*Get Mackenzie up and out to school
*Go to the grocery store
*Bake and frost a cake
*Finish my Bible study
*Pick Mackenzie up from school
*Go to the Bible study
*Fall Sports Award Ceremony

The main thing on my list was preparing a presentation for the Fall Sports Award Ceremony. I made a powerpoint and rehearsed my little schpiel on and off all day.
I kept trying to create a Elf Yourself (yes, I'm almost ready to debut our 4th Elf Yourself video) for the team, but the pics just weren't uploading.

Anyway, it all went great and my awesome team all signed a ball and gave it to me! I had such a fun season with these girls. So many fun memories. And now that they are all recovered from Guam, 3 of them are going to Kuala Lampur with the rugby team and 5 of them are going to Hong Kong with the basketball team this weekend!


*If you're reading that closely, yes, they gave me the nickname "V-dawg" in Guam.

Almost caught up!

Catchup!

Wow, there is so much to catch up on! Blogging is low on the to-do list, but I need a few minutes break from being thrust back into full-time motherhood.

I don't even remember where I left off. I know I posted from Guam, but there were a few blogworthy things that happened before Guam...

* Last Wednesday, my mom flew in. She's so awesome.

* Thursday through Saturday was the Dan Landry Volleyball tournament. It was great to have mom there to keep one eye on our games and the other on Mackenzie. She also donated a bunch of U.S. candy for us to sell as a fundraiser for our Guam trip.

* We won the tournament! No one can really remember, but we think this was the first or second time ever that Faith has won the 11-year-old tournament. I know my senior year we went to 5 sets, but then lost it. Shucks. Anyway, the girls played awesome and it was a great way to start off our Guam trip.



* At 10:55 on the 7th, we flew out on Philippine Airline for the 3 hr. 40 min. jaunt over to Guam. We were all so exhausted from the DL tournament, packing, and getting ready for the FE tournament, so we all crashed hard on the plane and then in the lobby of the hotel.

* The week was awesome. On Monday, we finished 1st in our pool of 4 teams, putting us in the gold bracket. After playing the 4 other gold teams on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were seeded 4th overall.


Thursday was an intense day because if we lost at all, we would go to the losers bracket and would have to play 4 or 5 matches for a 5th place finish. Thankfully, the girls came out rockin' and took both matches.



On Friday, we knocked off the #1 seed team, Seoul American (who had a 5'7" girl with a 36" vertical!!! She was amazing.) That was so exciting for us! Meanwhile, #7 Christian Academy in Japan upset the #2 and #3 teams in the quarter- and semi-finals. Saturday was the championship.



It was pretty fun preparing for, as Faith Academy has never made it to the finals of the Class AA Far East Tournament. Unfortunately, that's where the history-making ends. We won the first set, 25-20, but lost the next three 23-25, 22-25, 23-25. What a bummer. We played alright, but CAJ was en fuego. They played great. Sooooo, we took 2nd out of 20 teams. I need to keep reminding myself of that. I went into the tournament hoping for top 5, so finishing 2nd is terrific.



* I mentioned some highlights in the last post, but I'll touch on some other fun moments in the week. (Yes, they are mostly food. Get off my back.)

- Taco Bell
- Baskin Robbins
- Being called the "hot coach" by another team. =)
- Kmart
- Cold Stone
- Korean concentration games
- Sleeping in air-conditioned hotel rooms and playing in air-conditioned gyms.
- Mint Hershey's kisses
- Pumpkin Spice Latte's
- Veteran's Day BBQ at the beach



- Downtime at the beach reading The Host
- Shopping at the Guam Premium Outlets. Yes, Guam has an outlet mall. It's crazy that this little island in the middle of the Pacific ocean has all the US luxuries that we miss.
- Running into my 1st grade teacher! She and her family live on Guam and took great care of us.
- I wrote custom Mad Libs for our elimination games. They were pretty funny and helped relax the girls before games.



That's all that I can recall while hearing three different translations of "MOMMY" directed my way.

I just dropped my mom off at the airport this morning at 4am. She'll be en route for the next 26 hours or so. yuck. But I'm so thankful that she got to be here. Mackenzie keeps telling me little tidbits about her time alone with Grandma. They had a great time together. I just wish I had some more time with her! We managed to cram our favorite things into our couple of days together, so lots of shopping was had and lots of great memories were made.

Thanks for coming MOM!!! You're the best!

Hafa Adai!

Hafa Adai from super-sunny Guam! (In case you're wondering how to pronounce that Guam greeting, say "half-a-day" in an Aussie accent.)

We don't play until 1 pm today, but I woke up at 5:30 to catch the 6 am bus to Andersen Air Force base to scout the 7 am game! Now I wait for my team to arrive...

We've had a great week so far. I was shocked to realize that this was in my back yard all week...


There are Filipinos all over the island, so when they find out that Faith is a representative from the Philippines, we have instant fans at our games. It's pretty fun. We also had a sweet family invite us to the beach for a Veterans Day BBQ. It was so much fun. The sun is so intense here! It's like the PI, but there's no pollution to block out the intensity of the sun.

Here are the girls spelling out their beloved coach's name...


There are two fantastic finds at the beach in Guam. The first is star-sand. Mixed in with regular grains of sand are teeny-tiny star-shaped grains of sand! It isn't hard to look out at the endless ocean with awe, but when I see the detail that God put into a tiny grain of sand, I'm amazed at His creation.



The other cool thing we saw on the beach, but failed to take a picture of (as I was running at full-speed), was a wild boar!!! Two players and I had a very "Lost" moment. We were on a path that was half-beach half bush on one side, and full bush on the other. All of a sudden, one of the girls said, "Wait. What was that?" We look over and see bushes rustling, just like in the movies! Well, that was enough for me. I took of running down the beach. One of the other girls hung back to see what it was. Sure enough, it a wild boar in the flesh! As it turns out, running is the dumbest thing to do if you ever run into a boar. Thanfully, our little guy was more concerned with his food than us. Hakuna Matata.


Volleyball-wise, we're doing alright. THere are 20 teams here, so lots of competition. After pool play, we're 4th going into elimination rounds. We started well, but have had some moments uncharacteristic of our team in recent sets. The girls had a team meeting together last night, and apparently it went fantastic, so they should come out smokin' today! That's my hope and prayer anyway. =)

While in Guam, I had to celebrate Bella's birthday w/o her! My sweet little Bellers is 3! I can't wait to see her and the others on Sunday. =)

Alright, I'd better get off this and go send an update to the parents!

Halloween Art

I smile everytime I look at Mackenzie's drawing of all things Halloween, so I wanted to share. Can you identify all the spooky Halloween icons?



* Spider and web (top left)
* Witch on a broomstick (middle)
* Black cat also on the broomstick
* Skeleton - my favorite! I love the pelvis!
* Bat - to the left of the green skeleton
* Purple ghost - I had to ask about that one.
* 3 pumpkins
* Candy in the upper right

Trick-or-Treat!

We're back in business! The typhoon came through with a lot of wind and rain. We lost power for about 12 hours and lost internet for about 24 hours. The exciting news in this little condo is that I've not heard one drip INSIDE the house...meaning no more leaks! Pretty excited.

Mackenzie and I are having a blast! I can't get over how fun it is to just hang out with your kid. No diapers to change, no mouth to spoon-feed, no translating baby gibberish, just fun! Here's some highlights of our weekend.

1) Supper on trays in bed, while watching Princess movies.

2) Popcorn with Reeses Pieces, again in bed, while watching Mary Poppins.

3) Sleeping in this king-size bed together.

4) Breakfast on trays in bed. (When I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she said, "French toast!! 'Cause I know that's your favorite." SO SWEET!)

5) Going to Worlds of Fun (like Powerplay)

6) Having our own version of carnival food. I introduced her to Zagu. It's a kiosk that sells shakes with something special in the bottom of them. Any guesses? If you guessed chick-pea size tapioca balls, then you'd be correct! We got a chocolate shake and her face lit up when she felt the sago. She told me it was a marshmallow. Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked. We also got mini-donuts, a family fave.

7) McDonalds for lunch. Her highlight-not mine.

8) Dinner with friends at Burgoo.

9) Trick-or-treating with Abby and Olivia, aka: Snow White and Tinkerbell. Mackenzie wore her Cinderella dress again. It still fits, just a few inches shorter.

10) Church and lunch with friends.

11) A beautiful afternoon of swimming, laying out, and girl talk (we split up for this. Mackenzie and Abby's girl talk is a little different than mine and my friends.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, my two other pipsqueaks are having a blast in the U.S. Michelle posted this picture of Bella and Deacon with their cousins. Bella was so excited to see all her little cousins!


Bella was Dorothy and Deacon was Superman. I love their costumes!!! As I sit here, I can't help but think how different Dorothy's journey would have been if Superman had been one of the friends she meets along the way...

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I just wanted to share a picture of my sweet little niece, Isla (aka: CowBelle). I love her! She's so cute with her candy stashed all around her.